Morning had broken and she'd left him alone, locked in the room with her tablet as entertainment, and gone to do her research with her human friends.
Sated and spent, eyes closed, he rested against the white pillows. His body felt like he'd been through the Trial of the Hundred Canes again. Now and then, a shiver of pleasure lit his nerves, an exhilarating fallout of her Gift.
For the first time in a long while, he was at peace.
He'd given and received the Gift during lovemaking before. Such energy exchanges greatly enhanced pleasure and bonding, and so were common. But in small measures. Few men dared go to the lengths he had withstood, for fear they would forget themselves in the act and kill their lovers.
But Queens didn't care if they killed you or not. She'd drunk Her due deeply from him, head thrown back in rapture, full round breasts heaving above him. She brought him to the brink of the abyss before sending his life back to him in waves of delight, and he'd felt himself soaring, crackling with energy, alive like never before. The ecstasy of climax washed over him in waves. He was her, and she was him, and he was home.
His Queen's hand was the furnace of Creation and She was birthing him anew.
And now he was reborn. Himself, and yet not anymore.
He felt both coldly afraid of and irresistibly attracted to her greed and violence. Yes, Queens were like that, even the kind, level-headed and reasonable ones, it came to them from an ancestral place within.
He'd seen his proud Commander viciously humbled when he and his Queen thought no one was around, and he'd watched, silent, transfixed and shamefully aroused.
Everything in him screamed that he needed this, to the marrow of his bones. But his pride and good sense rose against it, and when Sher'zin tried to get rough with him, he fought with all he had. But how he wished to be overpowered... and when it happened, it was the sweetest release.
He'd vowed he'd lure this frail human here and have his way with her, as nature and the Gods intended. Instead, she had taken him with a force he had not expected, and he could not stop her. But had he really wanted to?
She'd made him drink from the fountain of rapture and true surrender like none other. He had lost himself in those shimmering, treacherous waters, and he had to drink again.